Amazon investing $10.4 billion in U.K. data centers
Amazon is making a major financial commitment to building, operating and maintaining cloud infrastructure in the U.K.
The e-tail giant plans to invest roughly $10.4 billion during the next five years (2024-2028) to expand its Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosted cloud infrastructure in the U.K. According to Amazon, the investment will support an average of more than 14,000 full-time equivalent jobs on an annual basis at local U.K. businesses.
These positions are all part of the AWS U.K. data center supply chain, including jobs in construction, facility maintenance, engineering and telecommunications. AWS first launched an AWS infrastructure region in the U.K. in 2016 and has since expanded the region and invested more than $3.9 billion between 2020 and 2023.
AWS’s new planned investment will increase its total financial commitment in the U.K. from 2020-2028 to more than $14.3 billion.
"The next few years could be among the most pivotal for the U.K.’s digital and economic future, as organizations of all sizes across the country increasingly embrace technologies like cloud computing and AI to help them accelerate innovation, increase productivity, and compete on the global stage," Tanuja Randery, VP and managing director, Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) at AWS, said in a corporate blog post. "We’re proud to announce our plans to invest in digital and AI infrastructure over the next five years to help meet the growing needs of our customers and partners and support the transformation of the UK's digital economy."
As a whole, Amazon says it has made direct investments of more than $72.8 billion in the U.K. between 2010 and 2022, including both capital and operating expenditures. Amazon employs 75,000 people in the U.K. across over 100 sites, including more than 25 UK fulfillment centers and corporate offices in six cities.
AWS global cloud infrastructure – a brief overview
Amazon recently said it will invest an additional $10.7 billion to expand its AWS hosted cloud infrastructure, logistics network and development center in Berlin, Germany; and also announced plans to launch a new AWS infrastructure region in Taiwan in 2025.
As part of a long-term Taiwan commitment, AWS will invest billions of dollars in Taiwan over the next 15 years.
AWS also plans to launch 21 more availability zones and seven more AWS regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. These will add to AWS’s existing 105 availability zones across 33 geographic regions globally.
[READ MORE: Amazon Web Services to expand in two new geographic areas]
AWS regions consist of availability zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations, far enough from each other to support customers’ business continuity, but near enough to provide low latency for high-availability applications that use multiple availability zones.
Each availability zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networks.
AWS offers a portfolio of services including analytics, AI, compute, database, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, mobile services, storage and other cloud technologies.
